i’d been kinky for about two weeks. Or, you know, about thirty-one years depending on how you count it. i’d been doing kink for a couple of weeks, and simmering in my own repression for as long as i could remember before that. So i was feeling some discomfort.
i’d just that week had my first experience of rapeplay. It had been on my private internal to do list, but i was still working through some deep rooted shame around even wanting that, much less asking for it. The opportunity had presented itself and – although poorly negotiated, psychologically unsafe and not how i should have tried a new kink – i’d gone for it. Cue processing.
Approaching it with more caution and better communication might have helped, but that processing was always going to happen. i’d finally role-played my top ranked, all time favourite sexual fantasy which also happened to be the reason i’d never been fully honest with a partner, developed moderate to severe sexual dysfunction, and was at least a contributing factor in my near-fatal drug addiction in my twenties. Lots of strong, conflicting feelings there.
i spoke to a few close friends about it – the experience, the intention to do it again, and the shame. Most of those chats were helpful – a surprising number of people i knew from my vanilla life were secretly up to all sorts of kinky shit behind closed doors so i wasn’t alone. But the real turning point was one conversation in particular where a friend framed it in a way i’d never even considered before.
They suggested that consensual non-consent play is just “make believe for grownups.” They pointed out the games children play – games of hospitals and doctors, crashing their toy cars together and derailing plastic trains, playing at marriage and then divorcing and abandoning their baby dolls. Children play with the real-world things that scare them. When we grow up, we do the same – we play video games and shoot each other, we watch horror movies, we bungee jump and skydive (well, i don’t – i’ll stick with violent sex and leave being high up to much braver people). There is a deep rooted human urge to play with fear.
It made sense. It made so much goddamn sense that i stopped wallowing in my self inflicted Shame Pit For Nasty Perverts and gave my head a good shake. A fantasy that 62% of women have (no one seems to be analysing nonbinary people’s sexual fantasies yet as far as i can tell – missed opportunity!) probably didn’t make me broken and unloveable. It wasn’t even particularly weird. It was just a thing – an outlet for something, a wrinkle in my subconscious that formed by working through some of the mess in there, and then constructed something a little wonky with the artefacts it found. i found violence and violation – in a controlled environment like my own brain or with a trusted human – hot. The world wasn’t gonna end. i was playing pretend.
i’d always done that, and it had always been weird. Again, weird in the sense that i thought it was weird, but probably not that uncommon. Kids are weird. So when i played Human Sacrifice Cult with my Barbies, or when my My Little Ponies conspired to lock the prettiest pony in jail because they were jealous, i wasn’t a serial killer in the making. Just a kid externalising the concepts my brain threw out into my conscious mind to see what i made of them. Its there in my adult life too in different ways, when i’m in a happy and stable relationship singing along to All Too Well as i do the washing up and feeling every single one of those ten minutes. When i watch a horror movie to feel scared, or listen to sad music to feel sad, i’m engaging in a socially accepted form of non-sexual masochism. And so are most other people.
You can see the human need to play in the dark in the popularity of true crime, horror, and other portrayals of violence, suffering and grief. You can hear it when a friend says “I need to have a good cry.” And while not necessarily a dark impulse, you could definitely argue that people who enjoy sore muscles from a hard workout or a really aggressive massage are dabbling in masochism too. Most people wouldn’t consider themselves Sadists, but most of us do acknowledge that we feel schadenfreude. Like when you laugh so hard you can’t breathe at a video compilation of people falling over. The line between the two is… well, i’m not sure there is one. Even our light entertainment is rife with it – find me a romantic comedy without a sudden conflict in the third act to add some drama and tension. Come, relax, and enjoy – this couple you’ve got invested in might break up, suffer with them for a few minutes before the relief of a happy ending arrives to make it all okay again. In the kink world, we’d call that aftercare. Comedy itself is based on tension – and whether it punches down or punches up, someone is usually getting punched.
So what does play – kinky play – do for me?
Here’s the thing – trauma is not the reason for kink. No, really, it’s not. Kinky people aren’t more traumatised than anyone else. But when you are a traumatised person who also happens to be kinky, you get access to a whole new playground to work through the mess in your head. It’s not a substitute for therapy, and a kinky partner definitely shouldn’t be shoved into a role as your therapist. But it can definitely be therapeutic, it can be cathartic, and it can help you figure a lot out about yourself – as long as it’s done carefully and from a position of stability. Kink has been my advanced class in trauma recovery – i had to get out of the crisis first, but it’s been my framework to go from surviving to thriving.
But that’s not all. Kink play cuts big fears down to size, reaffirms to me my strength and resilience, teaches me honesty, authenticity, and vulnerability. Through play i’m able to better see myself as i am, and show that person to others. The games we play are fictions but they are fictions that show the truth beneath. They ask questions of us – what is the worst thing i could survive? What is the worst thing i am capable of inflicting on another? What desires do i have that scare me, that make me ashamed, and what would happen if i pulled them, kicking and screaming, into the light? Turned them into a game that i can step in and out of on a whim, no more monsters lurking in the shadows but just roles to try on and ideas to inhabit for a time. The mystery and taboo burns away and there is nothing to be afraid of anymore, i am messy and imperfect and – yes – weird. And the world doesn’t end, and life goes on.
Some of the ways people find to play are shocking and confronting, and difficult to understand. From outside the kink world a lot of it may seem that way. Within kink communities, those gut reactions of “but you shouldn’t want that” can still happen, and can be messy to navigate while we all try to coexist. But the biggest barrier for me has never been what other people thought – or might think. It was my own shame i had to overcome. Accepting myself as an entire, flawed, complex being meant accepting all of me, and learning to play in the ways my soul asks for.
Life advice quoted in this post was from my friend Freddie
kirizal talks kink 